Michael Angelo Avallone was an American author of mystery, secret agent fiction, and novelizations of TV and films. His lifetime output was over 223 works, published under his own name and seventeen pseudonyms.
Biography
The son of Michael Angelo Avallone, Sr, Avallone was born in New York City on and died in Los Angeles on. He was married in 1949 to Lucille Asero; they had one son before the marriage was dissolved. In 1960 he married Fran Weinstein, and together they had one son and one daughter. In addition to his writing, Avallone was a guest lecturer at New York University, Columbia University, and Rutgers University.
Works
His first novel, The Tall Dolores, published in 1953, introduced Ed Noon, P.I. The most recent installment was published in 1989. The final volume, Since Noon Yesterday, is, as of 2005, unpublished. Avallone was prolific at writing movie and TV tie-ins, numbering more than two dozen, beginning with 1963's The Main Attraction. His most successful was the first of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. novels, The Thousand Coffins Affair. "I did it for a flat fee of $1,000 with a handshake deal to do the rest of the series," he said in 1989. "Then Ace double-crossed everybody and they got follow-up writers to do the others. They sold it to 60 foreign countries, and it stayed in print until 1970. Every copy of the book says April, 1965—there's no record of a printing order or anything—but they had five printings in the first three months! Everything to worked right in The Thousand Coffins Affair and it sort of set the pattern for all kinds of TV spy books. I was very satisfied with it, and despite the monetary beating I took, it did get me a lot of work down through the years." Avallone said he faced some minor editorial restrictions on the U.N.C.L.E. book, at the studio's insistence. The villainous organization of the book, Golgotha, was described by Avallone as being German. "MGM insisted on making them Russians—and of course this is 1964, the height of the Cold War," he said. Due to his involvement in the tie-ins, the cover of the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine, edited by Leslie Charteris, erroneously identified Avallone as the creator of the TV series. His tie-ins included Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Friday the 13thPart III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and The Partridge Family. A series of novellas in the late 1960s featured the U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX organization. Under the name "Nick Carter," he wrote some of the Nick Carterspy novels beginning in the 1960s. As "Troy Conway," he wrote the tongue-in-cheek porn series , and parodied The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from 1967 to 1973. He also wrote the novelization of the 1982 TV miniseriesA Woman Called Golda, based on the life of Israeli Prime MinisterGolda Meir. Among his pseudonyms other were Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby. From 1962 to 1965, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter.
Awards
Avallone was inducted into the "New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame". He was nominated for the 1989 Anthony Award in the "Best Paperback Original" category for his novel High Noon at Midnight.
